Designer Nick Bampton has created a book to answer the age old question: how the hell can I cook properly while on vacation? Meet the Muji Spice book, where every page is created with a different spice that can be torn up and dissolved into your favorite dish. That’s right, it is a portable spice rack for travelers who love to cook or people living in shoeboxes. You eat paper. Being that I am not a goat, I’m still not sure how that makes me feel. So you are sitting around your hotel in Japan, and you can’t wait to try a new veggie you found at the local farmers market? Bust out your Muji Spice book and tear off a sheet of white pepper for seasoning.
The book contains a variety of seasonings and spices, but I’m not sure what their core demographic is. That is, are the spices more for Asian cooking? Italian cooking? General cooking?
From a gastrnomical perspective, the concept itself is pretty smart. If you do love to travel or have very little space in your apartment, this book could definitely be a time saver. It could have many applications in the future, like being used for space travel or in countries where weather and living conditions require people to cook with non-perishable items. Perhaps it could even be used to teach the mentally disabled or those with limited physical ability how to cook for themselves and become more self-sufficient, since the book requires no measuring and is easy to use. On the other hand, eating paper sound gross, even if it does dissolve. And when cooking, don’t you want to use the freshest ingredients possible? How tasty could spices embedded into paper be? Plus, if you are traveling, especially around the world, isn’t buying food and spices from the local culture part of the adventure of eating and cooking abroad? Salt and pepper is not hard to get and usually really affordable. Most importantly, how does it taste? Does the paper affect the flavor of the spices at all? I think flavor will be the ultimate test, but we will have to wait a while for that taste, since the book is still not available to the public yet. Either way, an interesting topic. Muji, feel free to send me a copy when the book is produced! I would love to test this. Happy Friday, everyone! ~LTG!
